The Hieratic Ostraca and Jar Dockets of the Royal Museums of Art and History (Brussels). An Interdisciplinary Project of Study and Edition
(2024) New Kingdom Hieratic Collections around the World. Part 1 — accepted/in-press
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- Abstract
- (en) This paper presents an ongoing project concerned with the study and edition of the hieratic ostraca and jar dockets in the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels and details its preliminary results. This project is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach that combines philological study with analysis of the materiality of these artifacts and their morphology. These fragments of stone and pottery exhibit characteristics that enhanced their apparent suitability as writing supports, and this paper argues that these characteristics (and the act of selecting them) should be studied as an important part of the writing process. After an introduction to the project, the Brussels collection of hieratic ostraca and jar dockets is presented and the objectives as well as the methodologies of the study of the limestone and ceramic ostraca explained. This is followed by the publication of five ostraca as case studies and a synthetic treatment that outlines some of the project’s preliminary results. Our morphological study shows that the limestone ostraca in the collection reflect three different types of manufacture, and that flatness was not necessarily an important quality when it came to selecting a fragment of stone. As to our ceramological analyses, we see that sherds selected as writing supports often possess a clear colour and seem to have derived from large pottery items. As to the fabrics of these sherds, the most commonly identified fabrics are Nile clay and Marl clay. Our study also underlines the similarities between both categories of ostraca with respect to the characteristics of the artefacts.
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Lurson, B., Boulet, S., Delvaux, L., Demarée, R. J., Dupuis, C., & et al. (2024). The Hieratic Ostraca and Jar Dockets of the Royal Museums of Art and History (Brussels). An Interdisciplinary Project of Study and Edition. In : A. Fanciulli et alii, éds. (ed.), New Kingdom Hieratic Collections around the World. Part 1. Presses Universitaire de Liège. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/220229